what doctor muskrat thought about traps

quite a long while ago i promised to tell what tommy peele was doing in the broad field when he let nibble rabbit’s storm party out of the little cornstalk tent. well, to begin with, he was looking for the tracks of the woodsfolk. but as long as the snow lay deep on the ground he didn’t find many.

for doctor muskrat and the fieldmice and nibble rabbit were about the only ones who stayed there. doctor muskrat was too clever to leave tracks where any one would see them. and the fieldmice had their tunnels far below the crust, so you never saw anything of them. and you’d have to creep around among the pickery things before you’d see many signs of nibble rabbit.

but the birds called very often to get a drink from the warm spring hidden among the bulrushes that was doctor muskrat’s front door. it was chewee the chickadee who brought news of the quail. “they have to go a long way in the deep woods every day to find enough seeds for so large a flock,” he said. “and they told me that i must leave every last weed head that pricked up above the snow in their thicket for nibble rabbit.”

now that was very nice of the quail because there were very few seeds left, and nibble was eating the dried grasses that the pickery things kept from him and the delicate bark from the sunny side of the willows.

chaik, the jay, perked his crest thoughtfully. “it must be horrid to live in big flocks like that where you can never find a full crop for everyone at once. the partridge are perching in some evergreens. they say it’s safer than sleeping in the snow where they might be frozen in again. only they can’t find anything to eat but birch and poplar buds, and they’re awfully hungry. but not so hungry as hooter the owl and his wife. i wonder why they flew away right in the middle of the terrible storm.”

“silvertip the fox left then, too,” said gimlet the woodpecker, who had been working in the orchard back of tommy peele’s barn. “there must be something in that.”

“there is,” said nibble. “i was the game mrs. hooter chased into the cornstalk tent, but silvertip was the one who came out of it. he mussed their feathers and they tweaked his ears, and now they’re afraid to meet each other!”

chaik laughed. “the owls are still quarrelling,” he told nibble.

“well, silvertip has learned to get into the chicken-coop,” gimlet reported, “and chirp sparrow says that’s climbing into a peck of trouble.”

“who cares?” nibble rejoiced. “now that slyfoot’s gone to find a better hunting ground we have no one to look out for.”

but doctor muskrat spoke up very thoughtfully. “yes, nibble. sooner or later we’ll have to look out for man.”

“shucks!” sniffed nibble, carelessly flopping his ears. “no man ever comes here unless it’s tommy peele. and he’s such a little one, who’s afraid of him?”

“i am.” and doctor muskrat stroked his whiskers with his paw. “you can’t judge the size of his jaw by the size of his trail, nor know how far he’ll reach out to bite you!”

but nibble merely twiddled his tail to show how little he cared for a whole flock of tommy peeles. while tommy had him in a cage up by the barn tommy had been good to him. and none of the tame beasts were afraid of tommy peele. “he hasn’t any teeth to speak of,” nibble protested, “and he hasn’t any claws. he couldn’t hurt any one. i’ve been right in his very paws, so i know.”

“yes, you have,” agreed doctor muskrat. “and how did you get there? didn’t he reach out and catch you when he was the whole length of the pasture away?”

and this time nibble didn’t feel like twiddling his tail. it was perfectly true. he knew that somehow tommy had been the one who made that dreadful wire snatch him into the air. and he hadn’t quite forgotten how it all but squeezed the life right out of him when he swung there. it hadn’t felt in the least like the soft touch of tommy’s hand. so he asked with a little shiver, “what are those jaws like, doctor muskrat?”

“they’re harder than bone, and colder than stone. they never miss, and they never let go,” said the wise old muskrat very earnestly. and that’s the truth about a muskrat trap. it’s just a pair of steel jaws, harder than bone and colder than stone, exactly as he said. and they’re worked by a terrible spring. they never miss because the spring won’t snap unless a beast steps right between them. and they won’t let go again until the man opens the spring again. no beast can ever learn that. because no beast has ever imagined that they weren’t a part of the man.

“and a man can have a whole pack of those jaws,” the old doctor went on. “they’ll hide out in the leaves where you can’t see or hear them; sometimes you just sniff the faintest chilly smell on them. they’re worse than a whole pack of silvertips because you can see and hear and smell him.”

“how awful!” breathed nibble. “it isn’t fair!”

“well, mother nature wasn’t fair to man in the first-off beginning,” argued the wise old beast. “the cows complained and got their horns, and so did a lot of others, but man wouldn’t complain. it’s a law that when a beast invents anything for himself he has a right to use it. so you can’t blame man for using anything.”

“well,” said nibble thankfully, “i’m glad tommy peele doesn’t use those jaws.”

but up behind the barn tommy peele had his first pair of the awful things. he wouldn’t have dreamed of using them on the chickens or watch the dog, or even on nibble rabbit, because they were friends of his. but he didn’t think any more of using them on a muskrat, that he didn’t know, than the muskrat would have thought of using his sharp teeth on tommy peele. and he wanted the muskrat’s skin. which was perfectly natural because every man has had to use some other creature’s fur since the first-off beginning of things—until he got to be friends with them.